bit-tech redesign: New website and forum live now!

FINAL UPDATE (28/06/2017): Hi everyone, both the new website and the new forums are now live. Thank you once again for your patience - it took a little longer than we'd hoped, but we're thrilled with where we are, and it's only up from here. There is still work to be done as we finalise the links between the site and forum, but the initial stage is now basically done. We say initial, because we're now opening ourselves up to feedback from you lovely people, working to fix bugs, and making a big list of the changes you'd like to see. We have three separate feedback threads now set up in the forums regarding general usability questions, bug and error reporting, and general feedback. You will all be able to log in and post with your standard bit-tech forum credentials, and there's of course a password reset form if you need it. Not a member of our forums? Why not?! Make sure you sign up here. If, and only if, you are unable to access your account for whatever reason, you may email us at support@bit-tech.net, and we'll deal with it on a case-by-case basis. Any and all emails that arrive at this account unrelated to this will be deleted and ignored.

**The below news and updates is now out of date - please refer to the text above only**

In the coming days, the bit-tech you know and love will be going through a refresh, so we wanted to give you a quick heads up about what you can expect.

For more than a year, our team of developers has been working tirelessly on an update for bit-tech that'll ultimately make it better in every way. The most obvious change for most of you, our loyal readers, will be the front-end redesign, which is very much a revolution rather than an evolution. It will still be very much recognisable as bit-tech, but it'll now be easier to find the most recent content, and you can all enjoy a faster, responsive site with true mobile support and full HTTPS encryption – hooray! The transition to this new and improved bit-tech should happen fairly seamlessly and with minimum downtime at some point this week, most likely tomorrow morning.

The second big change relates to the forum, the entirety of which is being migrated from the current out-of-date vBulletin platform to XenForo. This is no easy task, but it's a necessary one for security, longevity, and usability, and it will also give us improved control and allow us to respond to problems and bugs much more efficiently. We know the forums are a treasured corner of the internet for many of you (ourselves included!), so we are doing everything we can to make this transition as smooth, painless, and quick as possible – we have a full-time team of developers that will be managing, monitoring, and optimising everything – but there will be an unavoidable period of downtime later this week, so please bear with us. After this, however, you'll be able to log in with your usual credentials and enjoy (or complain about) everything that's new. The best thing you can do to help us and yourselves is to make sure you know your current vBulletin username/email address and password, as you'll most likely need to re-enter them once the forums are back up.

While ourselves and the moderators who helped with the closed beta test of the forums have been giving continuous feedback to the devs, we will of course be collecting as much feedback as possible from you guys in the Feedback & Suggestions section of the forum. Dedicated, stickied threads will be set up for this to make everyone's lives easier.

While these are the major changes that will affect you, the majority of the work has actually been behind the scenes – we're moving to an all-new back-end and CMS, for example. This is all merely phase one of a long-term plan to grow bit-tech and deliver even more great content in the future. We'll be able to do some very cool things down the line, and we're looking forward to sharing those when the time is right. For now, we thank you for your patience and understanding.

Update 1 (22/06/17): The new website is now live! Have a play, and see what you think. However, the forums are still being migrated, so we thank you for your ongoing patience. The forums will be your main means of giving us feedback, and we'll have dedicated threads set up for this. In the meantime, the Contact Us button at top can be used, but we kindly request that this is used for urgent enquiries only (e.g. site-breaking bugs).

Update 2 (23/06/17): We hope you are enjoying the new website. We sincerely apologise for the slow loading times yesterday and the 502 errors today. This was, of course, not our plan, but both issues are now resolved, and we are now refocussed on bringing the new forums online, at which point we will begin processing and prioritising all the feedback we know you guys will have. We cannot overstate how important this change is. The teething issues will all be worth it, and the site now has a new backbone that will allows us to do many cool things and implement changes with far greater efficiency. For now, the Contact Us button at the top can still be used to alert us of urgent issues (e.g. site-breaking bugs). On a related note, we have to give a big shout out to one of our readers - Richard Paul, you are a hero among men! Many thanks. To everyone else, we thank you for your continued patience, and we'll be with you as soon as possible.

Update 3 (26/06/17): Day 6 in the new bit-tech house. Unfortunately, as you have probably gleaned, the forums are taking longer than anticipated to migrate. There is not much more to add than this without delving into irrelevant technical details - we know you just want to get back online as soon as possible, and we're working our hardest to ensure this happens. Nevertheless, we wanted to give you guys an update so you know we haven't forgotten about you. We are truly sorry about the ongoing delays and disruption.